Remember CynthiaIt snowed on Sheffield all day that dayand you drove smilingdown the road,snowcovered,smiling.It snowed on Sheffield all day that dayand I skidded into you on Suffolk Street.You were smilingand I smiled too.Remember Cynthia.You whom I did not know.You who didn't know me.Remember.Remember that day.Don't forget,Cynthia,a man was smoking,sheltering in a bus shelter,and he cried your name,Cynthia,and you ran to himthrough the snow,and you threw yourself in his arms.Remember that, Cynthia.Don't be mad if I speak intimately.I speak intimately to everyone I loveeven if I've only seen them once.I speak intimately to all who are in love,even if I don't know them.Remember, Cynthia.Don't forgetthat good and happy snowon your happy faceon that happy town.O Cynthiado you still drive through the snow?What's become of youunder the atomic snowballs?And he who held you in his armsamorously,is he dead and gone or still so much alive?O Cynthia,it snowed on Sheffield all day todayas it snowed before,but it's not the same anymore.It's a snow of soreness and desolation,not an atomic snowbut simply cloudsthat die like dogs,dogs that disappearin sodden, snowbound Sheffield.I am not smiling now.O Cynthia.Remember, Cynthia.

The silkiness of your hair the glinting of your eyes the patience of your ears the petiteness of your mouth the softness of your neck the roundness of your breasts the flowing of your curves the tenderness of your hands the heat of your heart the plumpness of your thighs the firmness of your legs the daintiness of your feet create in you a magnetism to which I like an opposite pole am attracted

Until the power is shut off the magnetic force will hold us inseparably locked together

Monday, 28 June 2010

With whom do I rest my thoughts the whole day long ? Who lifts the burdens of the day from off my shoulder-weary frame in happy contemplation of the time when next we meet ? Who was so kind to me that I think only about the kind of ways in which I might reciprocate ? It is my galant galumptuous girl who is a Killarney girl through and through with all that that implies Unlike this poem love does not end but endures long past the ending of the written word

He’ll always rememberthe first timeShe was only 11and he just 15A Sunday-school outing to the coastEveryone elseplayed ball on the beachor swam in the blue oceanThey went for a strollalong the cliff topand in the long grassthey found itfor the first timeThey did not knowthat at her ageit was strictlyillegalThey'd had no lessonsat schoolTheir parentsassumed their innocenceof such mattersHe has not seen her sinceThey both moved onHe did hearone yearthat she married a plumber's matefrom CastlefordNowHe finds it more comfortablein a bed,more relaxing in privateafter a cosyfireside drinkBut nothingcould ever replacethat first timein the long grasson the cliff top,both of themscared stiffin casesomeone might walk byNo-one did

All the hectic routine, the toing the froing the flitting the flying, the eternal round of pubs selling watered-down beer. Never getting anywhere - not even back - the route is different but the journey's the same, beer-flavoured water is all we find to buy.

A million pubs, a million roads, motorways and country lanes and at the end the pointlessness of one more pub to add to the list.

Saturday, 26 June 2010

which was once my other homewhich gave me freedom a centre to wander from explore fromwhich filled my life with friends memories of the hustling and bustling of a city teeming with culture symphonies, poetry, the theatre, a shilling to stand in the gallery for Mozart's Magic Flute, the dirty little backyard bars full of good cheap beer and mutton pies, the greenery of the parks with duck-filled ponds and bread-stealing pigeons, art-packed galleries, shops for paupers and millionaires, statues in the square, the Sunday market sprawling over the streets thronged with sharks and bargain-hunters, the riverside - its dockland dreariness uninviting its bridges graceful and longing, life oozing from every part from the near-city-centre slums to the mansions of outer suburbia

is dead for me now returning for a day after an absence of years Its one-way systems and network of newly-built ringroads make my motoring a hell

And gone are the friends I shared it with

The surface glitter is still herebut the life has goneas I make my waythrough this now alien city

Friday, 25 June 2010

(Michael Cleaver on the organ of St.Peter Mancroft, Norwich, September 8th 1970)

The quiet ruminative commencement The cud-chewing cow The sense of no impending crescendo until The bull running wild The massive crescendo is built reaches climax Calf-producing coitus The peaceful post-ecstacy relaxation The time of maturation follows

Thursday, 24 June 2010

Back in the fifties when Bill Haley rocked around the clock and Marty Wilde jived on the 6.5 special when Billy Fury and Adam Faith were Britain's answer to Elvis the "Third" was all Bach and Beethoven, with jazz and pop just the youthful noise of a beatnik generation - even Stockhausen was hard to accept!

But tonight, in the seventies, on Radio Three I heard rock-an-roll and skiffle played hard by Marty Wilde and Johnny Kidd Harry Webb and Lonnie Donegan And I heard Tchaikovsky on Radio One this afternoon

If we'd known this then we'd have died of shock and our parents would have too!

Robin Hood,who was born at Woolley near Wakefield,who fought with Thomas at Boroughbridge in thirteen-twenty-two,who was outlawed afterwards having witnessed the execution of Thomas in his castle at Pontefract,who lived for two years in the forest of Barnsdale,who was the hero of ballads,who received a pardon from Edward, our comely king,who served as 'porteur' to the king before returning to his chapel at Norton,who died at Kirklees,could have been proud of this place!

Losing one's way in the forest is easily done,treading through the undergrowth now scarcely half as thick six and a half centuries on.Most of the trees have gone,been thinned,giving way to farms and collieries.Sufficient remains still to lure the ardent foresterand trap the unwary in its maze of pathways.

All this is true on a winter Wednesday evening,but on a summer Sunday afternoonthe children, and adults too, often outnumber the trees -people mostly who know not the true facts of historybut who can be led to believe in the Sherwood myth of Nottinghamshire with the trappings of a Maid Marion brought over from France two and a half centuries too late for her English lover,and a friar of a disputed order.Tourists may believe in a figuredistorted from roguish realityinto a fun-loving freedom-fighter hiding from incompetent sheriffs in the largest tree in Sherwood.This tree,surrounded by ice-cream wrappers, cigarette-cartons and other discarded paraphernalia of the masses,propped up with ropes and metal sheeting and four poles (telegraph type),is a Mecca for the naive led by tourist-gleaning southerners spinning their fabrications over a solid foundation conveniently buried and overlooked.

Robin would have retched at the thought of all thisfor the Sherwood that he knewwas a tiny, barely significant place in Eggboroughwhere stands now a massive power station feeding Yorkshire with electricity.

In a modern car the journey takes an hour between the two.In Robin's day, on foot, it took a day.He may, on his way to Nottingham to receive his pardon from the king,have passed this very spot,for the forests were his domain and through these his route would lie.Then might he have been proud of this southern tree,but of latter-day misplaced hero-worship he would only have despaired.

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Bare midriffs above belt-like skirtsdangerously diverting drivers' eyesLow gears on steep summer-sun-sweating hillsforsaking the motorways for country lanesA Metro-van chasing an Audi Sportsobliquely overtaking an old VWSun-seeking families of all shapes and sizesspilling out of Volvos, Vauxhalls and FordsIce-cream vans and mobile tea-shopscarrying on their business with acumenBabies wailing, children playing,radios blaring out news and noiseAnd somewhere behind the hoary, human hordeslies the beauty of the scenery they've all come to see

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

His first homeis a bedroomin his parent's house in the countryOne bed - for sleeping in - for sitting on - for strewing papers onA collapsible table - for writing typing collapsing onA bookcase and a bookshelf - fillednot only with booksbut the memories of youthA music centre - for filling the room with sounds of Mozart or sixties American popHere, by motherly love, he's waited upon, fed, and gets his washing done

His second homeis a one-roomed flatin the big city where he worksyet does not even knowthe girl who lives in the flat oppositeA sink in one corner - the electric cookerin the diametrically opposite cornerOdours of fried bacon and other foodsfill the airHere he fends for himself, cleans and dusts -shut in from the alien citywith views over window-box tulipsto housing estates on distant hills

His third homeis a six-year-old car- a mobile homeFour-seater with two and often threeseats emptyA boot full of tools, first-aid kit,spares and luggageFed on petrol and loving-careit's more than a meansof commuting to work visiting the supermarket and transportation between first home and second or into the heart of the fourth

These three homes are personal to him

His fourth homeis the whole wide world- limitless -Here there are no walls to enclose

Little lambs are playingin the pale, green field,but beneath the warm suna cold wind blows.Four ewes come uplooking for a biteof chicken sandwichor a swig of vacuum-flask coffee.The beck still racesthrough the village,down the waterfalland out again.What visitors there arehave room to move about and walkover stepping-stones and bridges,though shoes become muddy.Further up the dalethere is snow to be seen -the last remnants of winterremaining, withstandingthe onslaught of summer,(heralded by the lambs)with its hordesof tourists,ice-cream vans,hot weather,and the sunshine of money.

The car which is parked outside my door is large enough for the whole world since it is large enough for two. Under its bonnet is a wild engine impatient as my passion, spirited as your thoughts. Command it, my love, and I will carry you away - not from one place to another - but out of this world The engine starts, the car revs up; heavenward through the clouds we ride, the wind whistling about us. Do we sit still while the whole world moves or is it our daring flight? Are you dizzy, my love? Then hold on tight to me! I shall not become dizzy. Spiritually one does not become dizzy when one thinks only of a single thought - I think only of you! Physically one does not become dizzy if one fastens the eye on a single object. - I look only at you! Hold fast, my love! Should the world pass away, our car vanish beneath us, we still hold each other close, floating in the harmony of the spheres

I saw a dead hareby the side of the roadover KiplincotesIt may have runinto the path of a caror died of some maladyindigenous to haresDrawing near a flock of birdsflew off into treesThrough my rear-view mirrorI saw them returnto feed their winter hungeron the meat of the corpseThe one is deadso the others may live

Don't smother the fire, mother we all of us feel the cold Don't smother the fire, mother you need its warmth when you're growing old Don't smother the fire, mother its cheery flame dispels the gloom Don't smother the fire, mother let its warmth invade the room Don't smother the fire, mother but let it burn up bright Don't smother the fire, mother for it is our only light

Sunday, 13 June 2010

A thin layer of virgin-white snow, freshly fallen at 1 a.m., covers the road of mud and dirt left by lorries toing and froing the building site. The track of the tyres of a late-night car stand out upon the newlaid snow like pioneer pathways across the terrain of life. Soon these marks will vanish beneath yet newer snow, and at daybreak pedestrians will curse the snow churning it up with the mud below revealing again the builder's muck. But, as here for a moment I stand, I see, reflected by streetlamps, the beauty which is winter's; yet the cold shivers send me running to the warmth of my electric-blanketed bed.

Thursday, 10 June 2010

When I think of sand I remember the golden sands of a beach little-visited. The sands of Southend on the Mull of Kintyre is made of softest gold, stretching along from where hens play in the road, down to the waves rolling over towards Ireland. The old dilapidated lifeboat house, long-abandoned in favour of the calmer waters of Campbeltown Loch, lies waiting for some industrial archaeologist to rediscover and investigate anew. White flat stones, the silver amid the gold - ideal for skimming, (my favorite occupation); those stones could bounce full thirteen times before sinking beneath the rolling waves - . The sky above is sometimes blue as amethyst, sometimes as sapphire, but always precious, even when from dark clouds the rains of heavy storms pour and mists obscure the view across Sanda Sound. These are times when no-one walks on the sands of Dunaverty Bay and Brunerican Bay. Always the mist and the rain clear, giving way to the sun, on the golden sands of Southend.

"And when he was departed thence he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him and he saluted him and said to him, Is thine heart right as my heart is with thy heart? And Jehonadab answered, It is. If it be give me thy hand: and he took him into the Chariot" — 2 Kings 10, 15

Heart to heartis soul to soulYour opinion is thine ownmy own -- mine ownI drink the wine and eat the bread,You have a silent still communionI may baptise my children,You when they become adultMy worship may be odourless,Your air filled with incenseThese are secondary thingsfor if heart is to heartsoul is to soulIf you truly hold your opinionsthen be true to themand I will be true to mineIf your heart is with my heartthen love me,not as you love your neighbour,not as you love a stranger,not as you love your enemies,not with latitudinarianismas Wesley put it,but love me as a brother in Christheart to heartsoul to soul

It's there alright It's certainly there but you'll never reach it actually get there You can motor up the road part of the way but it stops a long way short It's possible to walk along the footpath for quite a good distance as far as the bottom of the hill You can climb the hill if it suits you and scramble down the other side If you are very very careful you might pick your way across the peat bog and over the quicksand but even then you'll not be there If you get across the river as you just well might then perhaps you'd be almost there But...

Tuesday, 8 June 2010

Rain beating down on flag-stoned paths, the bus trundling on past row upon row of all-the-same houses. In these houses, back to back standing, working men have lived with their families. They still do. Some are living more in the corner pub - home just the place where they go to sleep and to beat the wife - . Daughters dream only of the time when they can marry out to chic suburbia - a modern council housing estate, one of tomorrow's slums -. One of the streets is called - Evening Street - There was never morning here, where it always rains, though the streets are not always wet. Nearby is Rose Hill, a reminder of when flowers bloomed even here, but that was long ago.

There's a cold wind racing along the prom Few folk venture on to Bridlington beach when the cold wind blows A fortnight from now, when the sun blazes down, the beach will be overcrowded There'll be Joe with his kids, from Castleford, Aunt Emma from Heckmondwike, and a Sunday-school trip from Liversedge, totally obscuring the sand whereon someone has scrawled with pebble, stick, something sharp, - Home Rule For Yorkshire -

The trampthe treethese twoboth oldboth greythe tree perhaps already deadBut yet there isstark beautyin the treeThere is nothing of beautyabout the trampwho is not yet deadHe lies forlornand stiffHis bones of legslie straightand arms that are samelie sameFeet that have touchedthe earthpoint heavenwardAnd eyesthat have seen raw lifestare blanklyas of onewho does not fear to die

At first it was easy - too easy Laziness crept in ineptitude gradually gave way to inaptitude At last the crunch came A crack appeared in the structure It held for a time but the flesh wasn't strong and the spirit had lost its will The whole structure collapsed in a heap the fragments scattered wide But yet it never finally died

Wednesday, 2 June 2010

As a clashing cymbal in the discordant darkness of the night I am become since losing Love As a river turning inward from the rolling sea of life as a hole in a garment that has been worn too long as the face of a clock that has lost its hands as a dried-up lake in the desert of loneliness I am become since losing Love

Tuesday, 1 June 2010

The Death is the dying, that short fleeting moment between the living and the dead, which is a seeming eternity.

As the asp curls round your arm you clasp your left hand under your breast, you raise your right arm in a final, feeble, royal command; but as the asp draws the skin of your breast between its teeth, your eyes cry out in agony.

It is necessary every once in a while to escape from the oppressive closeness of the city; to take a bus away from the city to a small village up on the moors' edge from where I can walk up into the hills where there is no roar of traffic but the rippling of a stream Though the city is but a mere bus ride away it could be a million miles for here is not the solitude of the city, which is loneliness, but the solitude of the country, which is freedom